From Drag To Playful Depictions Of Queer Behavior On Screen, Artists Play With Sexuality And Have For Awhile Now.

In her 1988 essay titled “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Judith Butler argues that gender is a performance of societal conceptions regadring what’s understood as masculine and feminine. Her core idea lies in the notion that gender is an expression of what one does, not what one is. When one considers the definition of ‘to perform’ as being “to carry out an action or pattern of behavior,” it makes sense that Butler’s argument serves as the foundation for which many sociologists consider gender as a practice.